ExhibitionSeptember 3, 2021
Alfredo Jaar: Lamento das Imagens
Sesc Pompeia shows, from August 26 to December 5, 2021, a selection of Alfredo Jaar's work. The exhibition Lament of the Images is curated by Moacir dos Anjos and brings together installations, posters, and video projections from Jaar's four decades of activity. These are large-scale works that present Jaar's way of thinking about the politics of images in the contemporary world and reveal his thoughts on social control and the preservation of inequalities.
In Lament of the Images, from 2002, which names the exhibition, the artist reflects on the powers that control the making and circulation of images. The installation presents three short texts that introduce the political implications of the theme in different contexts and then temporarily blind the public with the strong light coming from a large screen in a dark room. This blinding serves as a metaphor for the process of concealing images and the consequent need to combat such violence.
According to the exhibition curator, Jaar's production formulates a politics of images in the contemporary world originally and powerfully. "He creates works that promote a reflection on the power of visual codes, notably those created and disseminated by the media, which both inform and blind their viewers; both emancipate and control bodies in the most different situations," reflects Moacir.
Jaar often asserts that "images are not innocent." In You do not take a photograph. You make it, from 2013, he highlights this phrase by the American photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) precisely to reinforce their importance. In Shadows, 2014, the artist again focuses on an image of pain and suffering. This time, a photograph made by Dutchman Koen Wessing (1942-2011) in Nicaragua in 1978, at the end of Somoza's authoritarian regime. In this installation, a sequence of other images anticipates the display of the powerful main photograph. A play of light and shadow highlights the silhouette of two women throwing their arms in the air in a choreography of mourning and agony. There is no text, just like in the book Chili, September 1973, in which Wessing himself drew up a purely visual portrait of the military coup in the artist's homeland.
"His works do not force anyone to take positions and attitudes, but only offer understandings of the world that are different from those that reflect and feed the consensuses and conventions that make life be what it is at each moment. They are works that interpellate and affect others, even if it is not possible to know, beforehand, the effects of the affections they produce," comments Moacir dos Anjos.
The exhibition Lamento das Imagens (Lament of the Images), at Sesc Pompeia, is in partnership with the 34th Bienal de São Paulo - Faz escuro mais eu canto (Though It's Dark, Still I Sing).
In Lament of the Images, from 2002, which names the exhibition, the artist reflects on the powers that control the making and circulation of images. The installation presents three short texts that introduce the political implications of the theme in different contexts and then temporarily blind the public with the strong light coming from a large screen in a dark room. This blinding serves as a metaphor for the process of concealing images and the consequent need to combat such violence.
According to the exhibition curator, Jaar's production formulates a politics of images in the contemporary world originally and powerfully. "He creates works that promote a reflection on the power of visual codes, notably those created and disseminated by the media, which both inform and blind their viewers; both emancipate and control bodies in the most different situations," reflects Moacir.
Jaar often asserts that "images are not innocent." In You do not take a photograph. You make it, from 2013, he highlights this phrase by the American photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) precisely to reinforce their importance. In Shadows, 2014, the artist again focuses on an image of pain and suffering. This time, a photograph made by Dutchman Koen Wessing (1942-2011) in Nicaragua in 1978, at the end of Somoza's authoritarian regime. In this installation, a sequence of other images anticipates the display of the powerful main photograph. A play of light and shadow highlights the silhouette of two women throwing their arms in the air in a choreography of mourning and agony. There is no text, just like in the book Chili, September 1973, in which Wessing himself drew up a purely visual portrait of the military coup in the artist's homeland.
"His works do not force anyone to take positions and attitudes, but only offer understandings of the world that are different from those that reflect and feed the consensuses and conventions that make life be what it is at each moment. They are works that interpellate and affect others, even if it is not possible to know, beforehand, the effects of the affections they produce," comments Moacir dos Anjos.
The exhibition Lamento das Imagens (Lament of the Images), at Sesc Pompeia, is in partnership with the 34th Bienal de São Paulo - Faz escuro mais eu canto (Though It's Dark, Still I Sing).
